John Dodds: The diamond who tends to the jewel in Yorkshire CCC's crown

The opportunity to catch up with friends at the ground – not least Bill Mustoe, the Scarborough president, one of the nicest and finest men in the game.

The North Marine Road venue itself, with its red-bricked pavilion, white marquee, shiny new West Stand and popular bank.

And, away in the distance, the rolling sea and the spectacular North Bay, with its towering castle and evocative landscape.

But there is another reason why Scarborough is so special, why Yorkshire’s supporters flock there each year.

It is because the pitches invariably produce great cricket – thanks to groundsman John Dodds.

It may have escaped your attention, or perhaps barely registered due to the sheer predictability of his triumph, but Dodds recently scooped the outground pitches trophy at the ECB Grounds Manager of the Year Awards.

It was the sixth time he has won it in the past 11 years, a remarkable achievement and a sequence that might have been even more impressive had Scarborough – most unusually – not been overlooked during the worst years of the racism scandal at Yorkshire CCC.

When you consider the number and quality of England’s outgrounds, from Sedbergh in the north to Arundel in the south, Dodds’ achievement is really quite something.

And it merely confirms what every Yorkshire supporter knows – there is nothing quite like ‘Scarbados’, the jewel in the crown.

For Dodds, 75, the ECB awards are naturally welcome (Richard Robinson, the Yorkshire head of grounds, was also recognised for his efforts during the Headingley Ashes Test and he was runner-up in the One-Day Pitches category).

However, it is the recognition of the wider cricket family that is just as important.

Take the words of Jason Gillespie, for instance, the former Yorkshire head coach and Australia fast bowler.

Gillespie loved Scarborough and Dodds’ pitches. They had pace and carry and reminded him of home.

“Jason always said they were the closest thing to the WACA in the UK,” says Dodds, referring to the old international venue in Perth.

“His words were generally that it was always a pleasure to play at Scarborough and I wish we could play on more pitches like these.

“He never ever asked me to do anything in particular with the pitches. All he said to me was, when he first visited Scarborough, ‘All I want from you is to make sure that the nicks carry to slip’.”

So, a bit like Delia Smith’s recipe for a Christmas pudding, perhaps, what is Dodds’ secret?

How does he concoct WACA-like conditions – and without the assistance of The Fremantle Doctor, the cooling sea breeze of Western Australia?

“I don’t honestly know,” he says. “Mike Corley, who used to be the groundsman here, and who once took me to Holland with him to help prepare a pitch during the 1999 World Cup when they took one game over there, always said that the secret was knowing when to get on the roller and get off the roller.

“It’s just something I’ve probably always had. He always said that I had it naturally. I’d like to think I can walk out there and look at it, and poke it and tap it and say it needs this or it needs that or it doesn’t need anything.”

Born at Driffield, and raised near Wetherby, Dodds began life as a groundsman at Stamford Bridge CC, York, in the 1980s. He played for the club as a batsman/wicketkeeper and, when the old groundsman packed up, offered to step in.

“I was always interested and I lived across the road so I started doing it,” he recalls. “It went from there really.

“I had quite a lot of years doing it voluntarily for them, I got the Yorkshire twos (second team) down there and when I left I was getting more games than we could realistically handle because the Yorkshire twos always wanted to come. I then set up my own little (grounds) business and did that for a while.”

Geoff Cook, the former Northamptonshire and England batsman, was a regular visitor to Stamford Bridge with the Durham second team and age-group sides.

The then Durham director of cricket liked what he saw and asked Dodds to move north.

“Durham used to come down quite a lot and Geoff liked the work I was doing; he asked if I’d move up to South Northumberland CC. So I went up to Gosforth to get their square up to county standard. I had four years there and then I went to Scarborough in 2011.”

Having watched cricket as a boy at North Marine Road, Dodds already had the Scarborough ‘bug’, as it were. He is not the first – and he will not be the last – to speak of the ground in reverential terms; it has a je ne sais quoi that defies explanation.

“It’s just the atmosphere when you walk in,” he says. “I don’t know… I think it’s with it being a little bowl as well. You can have 100 people in there and it can feel like 2,000. You can go in there feeling down but when you go through the gate you automatically feel good.

“I don’t know what it is, I can’t put my finger on it. Most people say that. There’s just something about it when you walk in the ground.”

Given that Yorkshire’s supporters love going to ‘Scarbados’, often booking accommodation months in advance, there is pressure on Dodds in terms of the pitch.

The last thing anyone wants is for the matches to finish early and for their trips to the seaside to be consequently ruined; nor do they want dull games on lifeless surfaces.

“I still get nervous before games,” he admits. “That first hour on the first morning, if four wickets go down, or something like that, you’re going, ‘Oh no, what’s happening here?’

“There was a game against Essex a few years ago that finished in two days when Amir (Mohammad Amir, the Pakistan fast bowler), swung it around corners and bowled 90mph. But there’s nothing you can do about something like that; that was just genuinely good fast bowling.”

The biggest problem, of course, is always the weather, that perennial bane of the groundsman’s life. This year was particularly challenging for Dodds.

Rain ruined the County Championship match against Durham, the One-Day Cup game against Kent was badly affected and another against Lancashire totally washed out.

That Roses fixture led to one of the most memorable sights in Scarborough’s history – that of Dodds and his staff erecting a makeshift washing line on the square in an effort to dry towels that were used to soak up water on the pitch.

“That was pretty incredible,” he chuckles. “The lads were saying, ‘We need to get these towels dry’ and ‘Can we put a washing line up?’

“‘Yeah, go on then. Get on with it…’

Dodds is ticking things over in the winter months. “At the moment, there’s not a lot you can do,” he says. “It’s been too wet to get on but I’m still cutting both the square and outfield when I can get on.

“In the summer, it’s often seven-days-a-week. Depending on how much cricket we have, it can be long hours too. A lot depends on the weather, obviously. The weather is always the biggest factor in anything you do.”

Dodds says Scarborough staged 121 games this year.

“Some were perhaps two games a day – maybe a junior rep game during the day and an evening league match at night. We certainly put on an enormous amount of cricket.

“Scarborough has got three senior teams, several junior teams and we also put on women’s cricket along with the Yorkshire matches and Yorkshire age-group games. The length of the season is about 150 days, and we usually put on about 120 days.”

Through it all, tending to the square with unstinting dedication, is a man whose enthusiasm for the job is as strong as ever.

Not that he actually sees it as a job.

“It isn’t a job really, it’s beyond a job. It’s a vocation,” he says.

“I come from a farming background anyway. When I was school age, I was always out on the farm at home come harvest time.

“I got a bit of that into me when I was young, I suppose.

"I still love it here. It’s a magical place.”